Henkel wasted no time as he entered his home, his steps purposeful and brisk as he made his way to the study. The door groaned shut behind him, and before the sound had fully faded, the familiar scratching of quill on parchment filled the air.
He hunched over his desk, his hand moving feverishly across the page, leaving behind dense, cryptic equations and symbols. There was no pause, no hesitation, as though his hand operated without direction from his mind. The scent of musky old leather thickened the air, subtle at first but growing with each hurried stroke of the quill.
Outside, Zinnia crouched by the back window, gripping a glass cutter with firm hands. The plan to seduce Henkel had fizzled out in an unexpectedly dismissive manner, much to her annoyance.
She had been ready to play her part, but the old pervert had tossed her out of his house as though she didn’t matter, a serene calm taking over his usual lecherous demeanor. Now, she found herself back at square one.
"Should’ve just done this from the start~," she thought, frustrated.
Carefully, she pressed the glass cutter to the window, carving out a neat circle in the glass. The familiar tension from breaking and entering settled into her muscles, an old, comfortable sensation.
She tapped the glass lightly and removed the piece, slipping inside with grace. Her boots landed soundlessly on the floor, and she crouched low for a moment, holding her breath.
Once she was sure the coast was clear, Zinnia calmed her breathing and let her Energy flow outward. The sensation was like an invisible ripple spreading through the room, brushing against the walls and corners, exploring every inch of the space, taking in every possible detail.
As an Illusionist, this 'sixth sense' had always been her advantage. Her Energy slipped through the house, checking for wards, traps, or any cultivator-level protections. Nothing. The house was eerily quiet—too quiet for someone of Henkel’s wealth and position.
''Strange,'' she thought. She’d expected servants to be walking about or at least some background noise, but there was none. It was as if Henkel lived in a vacuum, his home untouched by the usual rhythms of life.
Still, Zinnia pushed the discomfort aside, her focus sharp.
As she moved further into the house, the scent of musky leather grew stronger, sticking to the air like a dense fog. The strange smell gnawed at her senses, but she dismissed it, focusing instead on her mission. Her footsteps were soft, her movements deliberate as she made her way down the hall toward the study. The only sound was the steady scratching of Henkel’s quill, a rhythmic noise that echoed faintly through the empty house.
Zinnia arrived at the study door, crouching low and pressing her eye to the keyhole. Through the narrow view, she watched Henkel hunched over his desk, writing with a mechanical precision that felt unnatural.
His hand flew across the page, filling the parchment with rows of numbers and symbols. His body was stiff, locked into place as if the act of writing consumed him entirely.
Zinnia’s brow furrowed as she watched, a flicker of uncertainty crossing her mind.
He wrote without pause, his hand moving so consistently that it gave the impression he was a puppet, strings tugging at his limbs. For a brief moment, the thought of possession crossed her mind, but she shook her head. Ghost Cultivators were the stuff of children’s tales—old wives' stories meant to scare people into staying indoors at night.
She shifted her focus, funneling her Energy into her eye, sharpening her vision through the keyhole. The narrow view expanded, stretching the angle of her sight so she could see more of the room. The crackling of fire caught her attention, and she noticed the fireplace was lit, flames dancing brightly within.
That was strange. The house wasn’t cold, not even close to warranting the need for a fire. So why would he light one?
Before she could puzzle over it, Henkel stood abruptly, his chair scraping the floor as he pushed it back. His hand clutched the parchment tightly as he marched toward the fireplace, his steps hurried and rigid. Zinnia’s eyes narrowed as she watched him throw the parchment into the flames without a second thought.
The paper caught fire instantly, curling into ash, and for a brief moment, the ash glowed a dull blue before disintegrating completely. The musky scent in the air intensified, filling the room with an overwhelming density.
Henkel returned to his desk, his movements just as mechanical as before. He grabbed a fresh sheet of parchment and immediately began writing again, as though the act of burning the last one had no significance at all. Zinnia’s frown deepened. What was he doing? Why burn the parchment, only to start again with the same manic focus? She couldn’t make sense of it.
Crouched at the door, Zinnia waited, her eye still trained on Henkel. The room’s atmosphere felt heavy, oppressive even, and the musky scent clung to her like a second skin.
A faint wriggling sensation began to stir in her chest, a discomfort that sat just beneath the surface. She shifted slightly, dismissing the feeling as nerves, but it lingered, gnawing at the edges of her awareness.
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Henkel stood again, his routine unbroken. He carried the newly filled parchment to the fire, tossed it into the flames, and watched as it burned. The blue ash flared up once more, and the musky scent hit Zinnia harder this time, thickening in the air around her. She pressed a hand to her chest, the strange sensation growing stronger, like something was crawling inside her, but she pushed the discomfort aside. Her focus remained on Henkel.
He returned to his desk yet again, grabbing another blank sheet of parchment and setting to work. The quill scratched across the page with the same unrelenting speed. Zinnia’s pupils dilated, though she didn’t notice. Her attention was locked on Henkel’s bizarre behavior, the wriggling in her chest ignored as her curiosity deepened.
Henkel repeated the process a third time—writing, burning, returning to his desk to begin again. Zinnia’s breath caught for a moment as the scent in the room became nearly suffocating, thick and pungent. She blinked, trying to shake off the strange fog that had settled over her senses, but it lingered. Something was wrong here, deeply wrong, but she couldn’t yet place it. Yet, she felt compelled to stay.
For now, she would wait and watch, her eyes trained on Henkel as he moved with unnerving precision, the musky scent tightening its grip on the air around her…
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Nyx crouched deeper into the shadows, his feathers blending seamlessly with the darkness around him.
The slums of Sichal were alive with their usual chorus—distant murmurs, raised voices, the clatter of boots on cobblestones. Yet, despite the bustle, something about the rhythm of the slum gnawed at him. It wasn’t the noise or the chaos; it was the subtle offbeat that lingered just beneath it all.
Nyx’s sharp eyes swept over the crowd, picking up on the movements and conversations, lingering on the small details others would miss.
A group of women gathered near a vendor, their voices raised in frustration as they haggled over the price of bread. One of them, her dirty blonde hair tied back with a faded ribbon, leaned forward aggressively, her voice rising as she gestured toward the vendor. Nyx watched her closely, tilting his head. Her face twisted in anger, but there was a slight delay to her movements, as if she had to remind herself how to act angry. The small gap between the emotion and the reaction prickled the back of his mind.
Not far from her, Nyx’s attention was pulled to another woman, a working girl by the looks of her threadbare clothing, which had been deliberately torn to expose just enough skin to pass for seduction. Her lips were curled in a scowl, her arms crossed as she listened to the bickering women nearby. But it wasn’t her posture or her demeanor that struck Nyx—it was her tongue.
As the argument escalated, the woman’s tongue flicked out in irritation. It was long, unnaturally long, and left behind a faint gleam of blue on her lips, as though she had licked something more than just the air. It was quick, almost too fast to catch, and none of the others seemed to notice it. Not the vendor, not the women beside her. It was as if it hadn’t happened at all. Nyx blinked, his feathers bristling slightly.
''Strange'', he thought. He had seen many things in his time, but a tongue like that, in such an unremarkable moment, was new even to him.
The argument continued, the voices rising higher, but Nyx’s attention had already shifted.
Further down the street, a group of laborers were loading crates onto a cart. They grumbled about the weight of the boxes, their voices laced with exhaustion, but Nyx noticed how one of them—a lanky man with filthy hands—moved.
He handled the crate awkwardly, just ever so slightly slower that the rest, as if he was trying to mimic the sluggishness of his companions but hadn’t quite figured it out. His grip faltered, and the crate slipped from his fingers before he caught it again, his body reacting a split second later than it should have.
The man beside him gave a short bark of laughter, but it was hollow, almost reflexive, as if the sound had been pulled from him rather than felt.
The others didn’t seem to notice, going about their work with the same disjointed rhythm that was becoming all too familiar to Nyx.
He clicked his beak softly, narrowing his eyes. Nothing was glaringly wrong, aside from the tongue on the prostitute, but these small moments—the delayed movements, the hollow reactions—were stacking up. There was a rhythm here, a pattern, but it was out of sync, as if the entire slum was slightly off-beat.
Nyx shifted his position, flitting silently to another perch. He was now on the edge of a low rooftop, his gaze tracking the people below as they went about their routines. A pair of beggars sat slumped near a crumbling wall, their hands outstretched as they begged for coins. The older man muttered under his breath, his head hanging low, while the younger boy beside him—his arm twisted and deformed—reached out to a passerby with jerky, hesitant movements.
Nyx watched as the boy’s hand trembled, then stilled, as if he had forgotten what he was supposed to be doing. A coin was tossed in his direction, and the boy’s hand snapped up, quicker than Nyx would have expected, the motion too sharp for someone who had been so sluggish just moments before. The boy pocketed the coin without even looking at it, his face rather blank considering his 'windfall'. Another small oddity. Another piece of the puzzle.
He moved on, his wings silent in the noise of the slum. As he shifted to a better vantage point, Nyx noted even more events—a haggler’s hand twitching too long as he gestured over a deal, a woman’s laughter ringing out louder than necessary in response to a joke that wasn’t particularly funny, the way a laborer sliced through a piece of wood with precision far too sharp for a rusted saw. It wasn’t that anything was outright wrong. It just didn’t feel entirely right either.
Nyx’s eyes flickered to a man walking alone toward a narrow alley. The man was nondescript—dressed in simple, worn clothing, his face drawn in the familiar mask of exhaustion that coated most of the slum’s residents. There was nothing that set him apart from the others, nothing that would catch anyone’s attention. But something about the way he walked tugged at Nyx’s mind.
The man’s steps were sluggish, sliding across the ground more than lifting, his feet barely leaving the cobblestones as he made his way toward the alley. His movements lacked any real urgency, as if he had nowhere to be and no real reason to get there. Nyx watched him for a moment longer, his beak clicking softly as he weighed his options.
With a quick beat of his wings, Nyx swooped down from his perch, landing silently in the alley just as the man turned the corner. The man didn’t notice him at first, his back to the crow as he rubbed at the back of his neck, a low grunt escaping his throat. Nyx edged closer, his wings stretching wide as he moved closer.
The man paused mid-motion, his hand freezing on the back of his neck as though he sensed something. But before he could react, Nyx darted forward, his talons wrapping tightly around the man’s neck.